IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v13y2020i11p3021-d370354.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Motivates Behavior Change? Analyzing User Intentions to Adopt Clean Technologies in Low-Resource Settings Using the Theory of Planned Behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Mohammad H. Pakravan

    (School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA)

  • Nordica MacCarty

    (School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA)

Abstract

Understanding and integrating the user’s decision-making process into product design and distribution strategies is likely to lead to higher adoption rates and ultimately increased impacts, particularly for those products that require a change in habit or behavior such as clean energy technologies. This study applies the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) in design for global development, where understanding the tendency to adopt beneficial technologies based on parsimonious approaches is critical to programmatic impact. To investigate robustness and applicability of behavioral models in a data scarce setting, this study applies TPB to the adoption of biomass cookstoves in a sample size of two remote communities in Honduras and Uganda before and after a trial period. Using multiple ordinal logistic regressions, the intention to adopt the technology was modeled. Results quantify the influence of these factors on households’ intentions to cook their main meals with improved cookstoves. For example, the intention of participants with slightly stronger beliefs regarding the importance of reducing smoke emissions was 3.3 times higher than average to cook more main meals with clean cookstoves. The quantitative method of this study enables technology designers to design and develop clean technologies that better suit user behavior, needs, and priorities. In addition, the data driven approach of this study provides insights for policy makers to design policies such as subsidies, information campaigns, and supply chains that reflect behavioral attributes for culturally tailored clean technology adoption initiatives. Furthermore, this work discusses potential sources of bias and statistical challenges in data-scarce regions, and outlines methods to address them.

Suggested Citation

  • Mohammad H. Pakravan & Nordica MacCarty, 2020. "What Motivates Behavior Change? Analyzing User Intentions to Adopt Clean Technologies in Low-Resource Settings Using the Theory of Planned Behavior," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-32, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:11:p:3021-:d:370354
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/11/3021/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/11/3021/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bandura, Albert & Cervone, Daniel, 1986. "Differential engagement of self-reactive influences in cognitive motivation," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 92-113, August.
    2. Rema Hanna & Esther Duflo & Michael Greenstone, 2016. "Up in Smoke: The Influence of Household Behavior on the Long-Run Impact of Improved Cooking Stoves," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 80-114, February.
    3. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List, 2011. "Was There Really a Hawthorne Effect at the Hawthorne Plant? An Analysis of the Original Illumination Experiments," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 224-238, January.
    4. Jeuland, M.A. & Bhojvaid, V. & Kar, A. & Lewis, J.J. & Patange, O. & Pattanayak, S.K. & Ramanathan, N. & Rehman, I.H. & Tan Soo, J.S. & Ramanathan, V., 2015. "Preferences for improved cook stoves: Evidence from rural villages in north India," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(PB), pages 287-298.
    5. Ajzen, Icek, 1991. "The theory of planned behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 179-211, December.
    6. Alam, Syed Shah & Nik Hashim, Nik Hazrul & Rashid, Mamunur & Omar, Nor Asiah & Ahsan, Nilufar & Ismail, Md Daud, 2014. "Small-scale households renewable energy usage intention: Theoretical development and empirical settings," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 255-263.
    7. Ben Jann & J. Scott Long, 2010. "Tabulating SPost results using estout and esttab," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 10(1), pages 46-60, March.
    8. Kowsari, Reza & Zerriffi, Hisham, 2011. "Three dimensional energy profile:," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 7505-7517.
    9. Botetzagias, Iosif & Dima, Andora-Fani & Malesios, Chrisovaladis, 2015. "Extending the Theory of Planned Behavior in the context of recycling: The role of moral norms and of demographic predictors," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 58-67.
    10. Johnson, Nathan G. & Bryden, Kenneth M., 2012. "Factors affecting fuelwood consumption in household cookstoves in an isolated rural West African village," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 310-321.
    11. MacCarty, Nordica A. & Bryden, Kenneth Mark, 2017. "Costs and impacts of potential energy strategies for rural households in developing communities," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 1157-1174.
    12. Robert Bailis & Rudi Drigo & Adrian Ghilardi & Omar Masera, 2015. "The carbon footprint of traditional woodfuels," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(3), pages 266-272, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Noelle Greenwood & Peter Warren, 2022. "The role of climate finance beyond renewables: Behavioural insights," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(8), pages 1570-1586, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Xiaojian Hu & Nan Wu & Nuo Chen, 2021. "Young People’s Behavioral Intentions towards Low-Carbon Travel: Extending the Theory of Planned Behavior," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(5), pages 1-15, February.
    2. Gunther Bensch & Jörg Peters, 2020. "One‐Off Subsidies and Long‐Run Adoption—Experimental Evidence on Improved Cooking Stoves in Senegal," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(1), pages 72-90, January.
    3. Muhammad Yaseen Bhutto & Xiaohui Liu & Yasir Ali Soomro & Myriam Ertz & Yasser Baeshen, 2020. "Adoption of Energy-Efficient Home Appliances: Extending the Theory of Planned Behavior," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-25, December.
    4. Jeuland, Marc & Tan Soo, Jie-Sheng & Shindell, Drew, 2018. "The need for policies to reduce the costs of cleaner cooking in low income settings: Implications from systematic analysis of costs and benefits," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 275-285.
    5. Bensch, Gunther & Jeuland, Marc & Lenz, Luciane & Ndiaye, Ousmane, 2023. "A bridge to clean cooking? The cost-effectiveness of energy-efficient biomass stoves in rural Senegal," Ruhr Economic Papers 1057, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    6. Guomin Li & Wei Li & Zihan Jin & Zhihao Wang, 2019. "Influence of Environmental Concern and Knowledge on Households’ Willingness to Purchase Energy-Efficient Appliances: A Case Study in Shanxi, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-18, February.
    7. Alessandro Concari & Gerjo Kok & Pim Martens, 2020. "A Systematic Literature Review of Concepts and Factors Related to Pro-Environmental Consumer Behaviour in Relation to Waste Management Through an Interdisciplinary Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-50, May.
    8. Ahmed Moustapha Mfokeu & Elie Virgile Chrysostome & Jean-Pierre Gueyie & Olivier Ebenezer Mun Ngapna, 2023. "Consumer Motivation behind the Use of Ecological Charcoal in Cameroon," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-22, January.
    9. Muhammad Yaseen Bhutto & Yasir Ali Soomro & Hailan Yang, 2022. "Extending the Theory of Planned Behavior: Predicting Young Consumer Purchase Behavior of Energy-Efficient Appliances (Evidence From Developing Economy)," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(1), pages 21582440221, February.
    10. Bireswar Dutta & Hsin-Ginn Hwang, 2021. "Consumers Purchase Intentions of Green Electric Vehicles: The Influence of Consumers Technological and Environmental Considerations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-23, October.
    11. Victor Fernández-Guzmán & Edgardo R. Bravo, 2018. "Understanding Continuance Usage of Natural Gas: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Evaluation," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-17, August.
    12. repec:zbw:rwirep:0538 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Yiming Shao & Zhugen Wang & Zhiwei Zhou & Haojing Chen & Yuanlong Cui & Zhenghuan Zhou, 2022. "Determinants Affecting Public Intention to Use Micro-Vertical Farming: A Survey Investigation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-26, July.
    14. Saqib Ali & Habib Ullah & Minhas Akbar & Waheed Akhtar & Hasan Zahid, 2019. "Determinants of Consumer Intentions to Purchase Energy-Saving Household Products in Pakistan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-20, March.
    15. Mengge Hao & Dongyong Zhang & Stephen Morse, 2020. "Waste Separation Behaviour of College Students under a Mandatory Policy in China: A Case Study of Zhengzhou City," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(21), pages 1-20, November.
    16. Waris, Idrees & Hameed, Irfan, 2019. "Using Extended Model of Theory of Planned Behavior to Predict Purchase Intention of Energy Efficient Home Appliances in Pakistan," MPRA Paper 109612, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Pothitou, Mary & Hanna, Richard F. & Chalvatzis, Konstantinos J., 2016. "Environmental knowledge, pro-environmental behaviour and energy savings in households: An empirical study," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 1217-1229.
    18. Khandelwal, Meena & Hill, Matthew E. & Greenough, Paul & Anthony, Jerry & Quill, Misha & Linderman, Marc & Udaykumar, H.S., 2017. "Why Have Improved Cook-Stove Initiatives in India Failed?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 13-27.
    19. Pagnarith Srun & Kiyo Kurisu, 2019. "Internal and External Influential Factors on Waste Disposal Behavior in Public Open Spaces in Phnom Penh, Cambodia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-14, March.
    20. Faraz Usmani & Marc Jeuland & Subhrendu K. Pattanayak, 2018. "NGOs and the effectiveness of interventions," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2018-59, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    21. Marco Bardus & May A. Massoud, 2022. "Predicting the Intention to Sort Waste at Home in Rural Communities in Lebanon: An Application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(15), pages 1-18, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:11:p:3021-:d:370354. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.